M3GAN: Horror robot doll turns meme fame into box office success
Last year, fans flocked to reproduce and modify a nasty and sassy dance routine from the trailer of the horror movie M3GAN, about an AI doll who appears to be sweet.
Following that, it has now outperformed forecasts at the North American box office in its first weekend of release. Over the weekend, the movie brought in $30.2m (£24.9m), much exceeding projections of between $17m and $20m (£14m to £16.5m).
“Word-of-mouth is through the roof,” said Jim Orr from its studio Universal.
That put M3GAN second in the US and Canada box office chart behind Avatar: The Way of Water, which took another $45m (£37m) as it became the seventh highest-grossing movie in history.
Model 3 Generative Android, also known as M3GAN, is programmed to guard and befriend an eight-year-old girl whose parents were murdered in a vehicle accident.
When M3GAN starts to take its responsibility to protect young Cady extremely seriously, it quickly transforms from its initially harmless personality into one that is more frightening.
When the trailer first debuted in October, fans focused on one scene in particular: the blank-faced M3GAN performing a cutesy but terrifying dance before approaching another victim.
With alternative soundtracks from Taylor Swift, Beyonce, and Megan Thee Stallion—who gave her namesake her seal of approval—that was quickly converted into a meme, and fans also replicated it themselves.
On TikTok, videos with the hashtags #M3gan, #M3gandance, and #M3ganmovie have received a total of 1.5 billion views.
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